50 Books Challenge 2022 Part Four

[southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fourth thread of the 50 Books Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2022, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, it’s not too late to join, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

The first thread of the year is here, the second one here and the third one here.

What are you reading?

30. Whatever Happened to Margot? - Margaret Durrell

Inspired by my rereading of My Family and Other Animals, this was a memoir written by Gerald Durrell's elder sister about her life as a Bournemouth landlady in the late 1940s. It was ok, but more fascinating was the story of its discovery: written, then lost in an attic for many years, it was rediscovered by her grandchild.

Now to complete the Durrell family trilogy (not sure if Leslie published anything?)! Can anyone recommend a Lawrence Durrell novel?

I keep meaning to start the Alexandra Quartet @RomanMum and also have Margot’s book on my list. But, I’ve only read the first of the Corfu books so far.

Hoping to finish this today
(Peri menopausal insomnia has played havoc with my attention span sadly)
It's brilliant
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This one

"Can anyone recommend a Lawrence Durrell novel?"

@RomanMum I'd suggest one of his island books rather than a novel maybe? Both Prospero's Cell or Bitter Lemons of Cyprus are well worth reading.

Having said that The Alexandria Quartet is gorgeous in a lush overdone sort of way, and I also rate quite a lot of his poetry. (I'm rather glad I read all of the above before learning more about his life.)

I’ve never read any of Lawrence Durrell’s fiction (although I have Justine on my TBR pile) but agree with Sadik that his travel writing is definitely worth looking at. I loved Prospero’s Cell (which is about Corfu and is basically his version of My Family and Other Animals).

Another interesting book to read if you’re interested in the Durrells is Amateurs in Eden by Joanna Hodgkin. The author is the daughter of Lawrence Durrell’s first wife Nancy (from a later relationship) and the book is about Larry and Nancy’s marriage. Also The Durrells In Corfu by Michael Haag which again gives some more perspective on their time in Corfu.

You might be able to tell that I have a bit of an obsession about the Durrells!

Finished!

10. Elizabeth of york the last white rose by Alison Weir

Ooh, thanks for all the recommendations. Have several more books to add to the TBR 📚📚📚📚

I’ve read one novel by Lawrence Durrell but it was a very long time ago and I don’t remember which it was - some googling suggests it may have been The Dark Labyrinth. I think it was quite good but not sure if I’m remembering correctly….that’s not much help, is it?! 😂

23. Stepping Up by Sarah Turner. Woman turning 30’s life is turned upside down when she has to take guardianship of her niece and nephew. This is a story that has been told many times but I thought it was well written and there was a lot of comfort in the nostalgia and cosiness of the writing. It may have been illness but I absolutely balled my eyes out at one scene.
24. The Girl Before J P Delaney a naff thriller about a creepy architect who built a house and preyed on his tenants (this description makes it sound way more interesting than it actually was).
25. The Liar Steve Cavanagh
26. Fifty Fifty Steve Cavanagh

The third and fifth Eddie Flynn legal thrillers (I read number 4 first) have kept me nicely occupied through covid although I managed a ten mile walk today so was hoping to return to something more taxing.
I picked up Leviathan by Paul Auster knowing nothing about it and so far it’s exactly like an Eddie Flynn book!

Grey Bees by Andrey Kurkov. Translated by Boris Dralyuk

Sergey is one of only two people left in his small village in the Grey Zone, the area between the Ukrainian and Russian forces in the Donbas region. He has no electricity, little food and spends his days topping up his stove with coal, caring for his bees and remembering a time before the war. As summer approaches he decides to take his bees somewhere they won't be disturbed by the war and so begins a journey across Ukraine to the Crimea where a Tartar beekeeping friend lives. But Sergey cannot escape the war.

I loved this novel and its many shades of grey. Although the village Sergey comes from does not exist all the other places mentioned in the novel do so it's possible to follow his odyssey and now that makes the story even more melancholy than it would have read when it was published a few years ago before we all knew the towns and cities of the southeast of Ukraine.

The Unexpected Tale of Bastien Bonlivre, Clare Povey
A lovely novel that I was reading with DS3 and he decided to stop, but we were 60% through and I was enjoying it so finished. A group of orphans take on the baddies against a backdrop of 1920s Paris. I thought it was very well done and even made me cry (but I am a very easy cryer when it comes to books).

Memed, my Hawk, Yaşar Kemal
A Turkish classic that was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1973 about Memed who works the fields of the landowner Abdi, who takes most of the villager's food and is a general tyrant. Circumstances occur that force Memed to become a brigand in the mountains. Some of the translation struck me a very literal because I could envisage what the original would have said and it didn't read quite right in English. The sense of place is quite something though and I really could envisage the mountains and the plains and the villages.

49 Superinfinite by Katherine Rundell

Really excellent biography of John Donne. Like many, I studied Donne's poetry for A level, and have returned to it frequently ever since (one place I disagree with Rundell is in her assertion that 'no-one reads Donne for consolation' - Donne along with William Blake are the poets I find most helpful when life is hard), but I knew very little about his life.

I'd always had a mental picture of his marriage to Anne as long and happy, following a wild youth, and hadn't realised she'd died so young (aged 35, in childbirth for the 12th time), and I'd also not realised how mixed Donne's fortunes were.

There's also - of course - a lot in here about Donne's writing, both the poetry and the prose, and it's fascinating to hear about how they intertwine with his life.

My only criticism is of the narrator (I had this on audio) - it's read with lots of distractingly over-theatrical pauses and 'poetical' stressing of words, both in the biography and in the quotation from Donne's work. It's a shame, as I chose the audio specifically to enjoy the poetry being read aloud.

I read both the Lawrence Durrell quartets when I lived in Spain where the only source of English books was the British Council Library in pre-Kindle days. They're very literary with lots of references rather than being plot based, the polar opposite of Gerald's books IIRC.

36 The Animals in That Country - Laura Jean McKay

Winner of the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke award. An unlikely pandemic spreads across Australia, allowing humans to understand the communications of animals, and enabling alcoholic grandmother Jean to build up a complex relationship with Sue, a dingo at the wildlife park where she works as a guide. It all seems a bit bonkers if you put it like that, but it was very readable, Jean is an engaging anti-heroine, and the way the reader gradually became more able to understand the poetic 'speech' of the animals was cleverly done - we come to understand Sue in parallel to Jean's own journey. But I would have liked more ambiguity about the reality of the disease, given its unlikely nature - could it just have been some sort of collective psychosis? There is some hint of this in the way alcohol and nicotine deaden the animal talk, but it's not really developed. The ending was too abrupt, with lots of loose ends, and ultimately this fell into the big bucket of speculative fiction that starts with a great idea and doesn't know what to do with it.

37 Hidden Valley Road - Robert Kolker

I'm a bit late to this account of the Galvin family, in which six of twelve children were diagnosed with schizophrenia. This was fascinating both in terms of the family story and the scientific background, but it took me a long time to get through as some days it was just too heavy and I ended up listening to the Infinite Monkey Cage back catalogue instead (this is the main way you can tell if I'm avoiding whatever I have on the go on Audible!). For me, there was too much on the story of the two healthy sisters (who as interviewees were the source of much of the material), and very little on the lived experience of those suffering from the illness itself. Glad it's ticked off my list, but wouldn't revisit.

Slowed down a bit as am reading a couple of big books (Len Deighton's Bomber and Bob Stanley's Let's Do It).

34 Bad Blood - John Carreyrou

Gobsmacking account of the rise and fall of Theranos, a Silicon Valley startup which raised millions based on the promise of revolutionising blood testing, but all based on utter lies. I found this a fascinating insight into a completely different world, although it doesn't leave you with much regard for the critical thinking skills of some of the world's wealthiest and most influential people.

Companion Piece by Ali Smith This reminded me both of why I liked the Seasons quartet so much (the inner lives of the characters, the playfulness of the writing, the political commentary - the bolstering experience of reading someone who witnesses what is happening and isn’t broken by it); but if I’m honest it also reminded me of why I’d previously written myself off as an Ali Smith reader, as my involvement in the book ebbed and flowed.

Sandy’s elderly father is in hospital during the pandemic; she is coping with that when uninvited guests in the shape of an old acquaintance and her young adult twins intrude into her life. There is also a section about a female medieval blacksmith.

I’ll definitely revisit this book, which is gorgeous as I treated myself to the hardback complete with David Hockney sleeve.

42: The Private Lives of the Tudors - Tracy Borman

Very detailed non-fiction study of life at the courts of the Tudor monarchs. Spoiler - they had very little in the way of genuine private lives as we'd understand the term. Courtiers watched almost their every move, were present while they slept, ate, went to the loo and dressed (it could take a thousand pins to weld Elizabeth I into her dress), and every tiny detail of their physical health was openly known - eg the menstrual cycles/difficulties of all the queens and consorts were common knowledge. The importance attached to rich fabrics and clothes, plus of course jewels, stood out as one of the biggest expenses of the Tudor court; it was all about display and boy, did they go for it. Very interesting, if quite a dense read.

43: Hard Times - Charles Dickens
Finished* *for the readalong. Good things in there to enjoy, but not my favourite Dickens to date, and I think it suffered for being too short!

The Wall by John Lanchester
After a climate disaster, sea levels have risen. Britain, in a move worthy of Donald Trump or Priti Patel, has become a fortress, surrounded by walls intended to prevent 'Others' from arriving by sea. Everyone is conscripted to spend time guarding the wall, which is what our narrator is just about to begin when the novel starts. I really enjoyed this.

30. Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn
A history of women's health and illness through history and how both have been constructed by medicine (the profession and its practitioners). I found this quite a distressing book at times and there was a short passage of a few pages that I decided not to read. It's a great piece of work and very thought-provoking, but with weaknesses. I did sometimes feel that it shoehorned in particular views without much backing for them. But perhaps that gives an accurate view of the conflicting currents in women's health and medicine.

Sounds interesting
I've just got this on kindle - it's £2.99 today

Hope you like it @ChiswickFlo I think it was £2.59 when I bought it a few days ago, and it was well worth it, I thought!

22. Love After Love - Ingrid Persaud Not sure I can give this a fair review as I listened on audible and have realised audible doesn’t work very well for me at the moment, it’s so rare I get chance to listen and whereas I can read (kindle with light right down) in bed with toddler in same
room or on sofa whilst husband has tv on,
I cant do the same with audiobooks. So I listened in a very bitty and disjointed way over months and months. I enjoyed the relationship between Betty and Mr Chetan and some of the writing, especially about food, but could have done without the son altogether really. Ending took me by surprise but probably shouldn’t have.

23. Ditching Diets - Gillian Riley I do own the longer/fuller version of this which covers the same material in more detail, but it’s been a long time since I read it and I’ve been feeling a bit disordered around food/ eating for a while now so read this on kindle. A lot makes sense, I don’t necessarily agree with the push towards paleo though. There’s a weird conflict between ‘you never have to diet again’ and describing some foods as poison or ‘not even food’ and basically saying don’t eat
them, but don’t diet. I get where it comes from, I’m just not sure it totally resolves things for me. Hopefully it will help a bit.

31. The Gran Tour - Ben Aitken

Enjoyed this account of six short coach holidays to various parts of the British Isles and beyond, made by a grumpy millennial in amongst a coachload of pensioners. Genuinely funny in places, tinged with sadness in others, and starring a cast of eccentrics that Ben warms to over the course of his travels. A good fun read.